AmateurMovieReviews.com

The Story: An introverted high-school girl repressed by her mother, taunted by her peers, and either pitied or ridiculed by faculty, erupts with more than just teen angst at her prom.

On Halloween in 1976 a modestly budgeted film from a young director and an up-and-coming new author opened in cinemas and no one has thought about high school proms the same way since. That director was Brian DePalma, and the author was Stephen King. The movie, of course, was Carrie and it proved to be a big success for not only the director and author, but also for the young actors in the cast, some of whose careers would rise to superstar levels.

But is the movie really that good? Yes and no.

The story begins in a high school gym class. The weirdest, in other words most ostracized, girl in school is Carrie White. As the credits roll we see her female classmates frolic around a steamy locker room in various states of undress without a care in the world. Unlike the other girls however, Carrie does have a care, a great care. She's in the showers bleeding to death! At least that's what she unknowingly thinks her first menstruation is, which she started while washing and, ahem, touching herself.
She screams for help and stumbles out of the shower only to be laughed at by her classmates. A maxi-pad dispenser is ripped from a wall. "Plug it up" they all shout as they pelt the frightened girl with feminine hygiene products. Ironically they behave much like bratty little girls as they make fun of Carrie for childish misunderstanding about becoming a woman. Her emotions literally explode as (intrusively) concerned teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) slaps her to gain her attention and her latent telekinetic powers simultaneously explode a light fixture overhead. It's a well-juxtaposed scene and it's one of the most honestly dramatic in the movie.

Miss Collins punishes the girls by sentencing them either to detention after school with her, or forfeiture of their prom tickets. All the girls go along but Chris, (the future ex-Mrs. DePalma, Nancy Allen) the unspoken leader of the "cool girls." She voices her opinion that neither option sits well with her and she summarily has her tickets revoked. As all spoiled brats do, she must blame someone else for her problems and Carrie is perfect for the job. An intense hatred builds.
After doing some reading, Carrie finds out not only about her period, but also about her senses. She knew she made that light fixture explode and finding out that power was inside her made her think differently for the first time that maybe she was special.

Unfortunately, as Carrie begins to understand her burgeoning womanhood and mental abilities, her mother Margaret (played with a hellfire-and-damnation, zealous intensity by Piper Laurie) becomes convinced beyond a doubt that the girl's a sinner. Margaret White is why Carrie thought she was bleeding to death in the shower. She'd sheltered the girl from all things the scripture decreed as sinful. Mrs. White, you see, was what people thought of as a nut. She locks Carrie in a closet, forcing her to do penance at a makeshift altar that is more revolting than reverential. That closet, and the frightening, glowing-eyed crucifix that hangs in it, are part of the great visuals from the movie I mentioned earlier in the review.

Meanwhile back with the cool kids...

Sue, the good witch to Chris' wicked witch, actually feels bad for shower incident and wants to atone for it. She convinces her boyfriend and star athlete, Tommy (a young William Katt, long before he donned red tights for TV fame) to ask her to the prom.
Hearing Carrie is going to be at the prom, wicked witch Chris decides to make Carrie's life hell for ruining her good time. Chris enlists her boyfriend Billy (a young John Travolta still smelling of Sweat Hog) and a few of their idiot friends in a plot to ruin the biggest night of Carrie's life.

Carrie reluctantly goes to the prom and she actually has a wonderful time. She dances, laughs for the first time in the film, and is even crowned prom queen! If that sounds fishy to you, your smeller is working right. The fix was in on the coronation. In a moment that builds upon the earlier horror of blood, Carrie steps into position and is doused with several gallons of swine blood. Dripping with blood and wild-eyed as an electric banshee, Carrie turns her lifetime of pain outward and takes retribution against her school, her peers, and finally her mother.

Now that first scene is great and I don't want to sound like I'm waffling, but I can't help but wonder why DePalama focused so much on the nudity? There is a certain unrestrained and childish innocence to the way the girls behave and seeing them disregard their own nakedness illustrates it, but even though the girls behave in a completely asexual way, and the visual illustrates a point, it's still fairly prurient. DePalma handles this film like he has others in his career, with excess.
How DePalma excesses most in Carrie is visually. He uses a lot of gimmicky camera tricks, the equivalent of animated gifs on the internet. His favorites are soft focus shots, wherein both the foreground and background are in focus. A close-up on Tommy's face would share the screen with Carrie standing in the background, both with equal visual crispness. The point can be made that it's a choice having something to do with the duality of the characters and the equality of their situations. To me it's jarring and forces me back from the story simply because my eyes are not used to seeing things like that. It disengages the audience, something a film in which the director wants and needs connection with the protagonist shouldn't do.

As annoying as some of the soft focus and slow or fast motion shots are (and there are plenty), the scene most bogged down with overused gimmick shots is the finale, what could and should have been the best scene in the movie. Swirling kaleidoscopic shots, the screen splitting into various views of simultaneous action, and over-used slow motion all make that scene a bloody mess.

In addition to the visual chaos presented in the cinematography, the two-dimensionality of the characters also hampers the film. Sissy Spacek showed great range and potential, but Carrie, along with nearly every other character, lacks real depth. Instead they are very easily defined and definable stereotypes. You have the geeky wallflower the good girl, the bad girl, the dumb jock, and the stand up all-American boy-next-door. The teachers and principal are no less 2-D and Margaret White is so over the top with her hell-fire and brimstone speeches about sin and the flesh it's easy to imagine Piper Laurie playing it that way for laughs, in particular the scene in which she talks about the night of Carrie's conception. Hearing it in the southern dialect she and Carrie speak (giving the impression they were outsiders in town to begin with) is actually a bit funny. "His brey-uth smelled lahk cheap whiskey, and Ah LAHKED IT!" Now I'm sorry, but if there isn't some humor in that overblown characterization, then I need to stop laughing at Carol Burnett's Scarlet O'Hara impersonation.

In his defense, DePalma was obviously not afraid to push the limits of what he could do while making Carrie. For my money he could have delved a little more into the psychology of menstruation, blood, womanhood, and power, but he didn't. Either way, the movie, while being less than completely satisfying and suffering today from what may have been edgy and artistic in 1976, does deliver some thrills like an old fashioned fright flick ought to. It's interesting to watch for nothing else if to wonder what the hell DePalma was thinking sometimes.
On a positive note, when Carrie confronts Margaret for the final time in their home the scene is pretty exciting. DePalma's willingness to go out on a limb works there. It's compelling and provides a visual that packs a lot more whollop than the eerie, but visually lackluster cap to the tormented relationship between mother and daughter found in the King novel. (In the novel, Carrie slowly stops her mother's heart.)

Immediately following that scene however, I was pulled back out of the story again to think about how unintentionally cheesy the whole thing really was when it ends. Needless to say It was an attempt to provide that one last shock that may work for some viewers, just not this one.
So the movie is that good, and that bad. I can see why some people love it and others pan it. I'm middle of the road, but I do have to say I would certainly miss it were it not in my collection. It's enjoyable, pop entertainment and it's fun seeing so many well-known stars in early roles.